Viridian Games

Good Lord, I’ve neglected this blog recently. I didn’t really mean to…things have just been kind of hectic. So it’s time for a grab bag post!

First, I did a short video over the weekend about how you can mod System Shock 2 to make it look better.

I am seriously thinking about doing a Let’s Play of either System Shock 2 or Starflight…once the Ludum Dare is over.

And that’s this weekend. And I’m getting seriously nervous because I don’t feel I’m prepared enough. I’ve been working on a little space-based 4X game called Spacesploitation! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the title). Currently it looks like this:

I had expected to finish it before the competition started. That doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.

So in the end, I’ll just do my best and see how that comes out.

Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go
I sold my soul to Patch 2.4

One of the things that has prevented me from wasting a lot of time on World of Warcraft since I hit level 70 has been the dearth of things to do if you don’t do instances.

Unfortunately, last Tuesday saw the release of Patch 2.4, which rebalanced the battlegrounds and added a whole bunch of daily-repeatable solo quests.

So this weekend saw me get absolutely nothing done on Wizard. Again. I did make over a thousand gold questing and finally won my first Warsong Gulch, though. I’m sure that makes you happy!

But in the end, let’s face facts. The reason that I haven’t been working on Wizard is because I don’ wanna. It was originally written as nasty, one-off code and I’ll have to spend a day just cleaning it up before I can add any new features like enemies. (Lesson learned: Don’t write nasty one-off code under any circumstances.)

So I think I’m going to move on to my second game. I have already decided what it’s going to be, but I’m not gonna tell you yet

I was supposed to finish up Wizard over the weekend, but Easter messed that up for me. Then I was supposed to finish it up last night, but chillun aggro messed that up for me. Now I’m hoping to have it done by the end of the week, and I’m reducing the number of little games I’ll make before the competition from three or four to two. I will happily take suggestions on what the second game I do should be.

This is something I started a while back but didn’t get too far with. Now I’ve picked it back up and expanded on it in order to get some practice writing platformer mechanics.

I’ve been thinking that it’s about time to start challenging myself again. Yes, yes, Planitia…but there’s something else I’ve been wanting to do.

I’ve mentioned the self-confidence problems that I’ve had in the past and while I’m a lot better (look, Ma! I’m writing in public!) there is one thing I still don’t like to do and that is compete. I shy away from testing my skills against other people, because I’m afraid I’ll discover that I suck. Well, it’s time to meet this thing head-on.

Therefore, I am hereby announcing that I will compete in Ludum Dare Eleven, which will be held from April 18-20.

Now, see, in order for this to really work I’m going to need to make a pretty good showing of it. So for the next month I’m going to be making lots and lots of small games. I’m hoping to do at least four and I don’t want any of them to take longer than a week to do. This will get me better at starting out quickly and sand over any edges in my 2D development skills.

So the bad news is that there won’t be any Planitia news for a while. The good news is that there should be lots more news on all the other games I’m doing leading up to the competition.

I’m also going to have to come up with a few good recipes, since one of the categories you’re graded on is food…